the cold dead eyes of a chef

Sunday morning and all was not well in my world. I was tired and cranky and needed a bottle, preferably high end gin. This bout of entirely predictable bellyaching was brought on by the twin evils of tiredness and a deep dislike of people. That’s not so good when your main source of income is completely based on being nice to people and not just your everyday nice either but super duper ‘can I give you and quick hand shandy under the table sir’ sort of nice.

I was tired of being nice. I had been nice to people all weekend, people I would much rather stab with a fork, and had just about lost all ability to fake laugh, feign interest or bluff in any plausible way that I gave anything more than a tiny little rats ass about customers needs and or wants when Brendan walked in. God save me from Brendan. Brendan is a regular guest and massive pain in the hole. As I wrote in another place Brendan “suffers from that most manly of diseases – the inability to respond to a simple question with a simple answer. He is relentless. Unbearably so. Like a Gatling machine gun he fires out the lamentably poor one liners and putrid puns hitting everyone that comes with in close proximity. Dining with him must be like eating with an unfunny Rodney Dangerfield.”

Now, since then I have developed a coping technique for dealing with Brendan, I just don’t serve him. It’s not a very slick technique but it works. Essentially I palm him off to another waiter. Waiter chum number one is too smart for that move though. This lead to an amusing evening which saw Brendan being lead a merry dance round the restaurant from one section to another as we created whimsical reasons why he couldn’t be sat in our sections. I won that night. But waiter chum number one wasn’t on Sunday so I had no such worries. Waiter chum the Younger was on and she is manipulatable. Don’t get me wrong I’m not proud of this but you have no idea how fucking annoying Brendan is. Brendan looks like the President or Chair or General Bloody Secretary or whatever they are called of a GAA club. He has a big red face which he mistakes for a healthy glow but is actually caused by blood pressure and he owns and wears the most hideous collection of sweaters you have ever seen. Good grief they are like charity shop rejects. Or something you give a dog to sleep in.

Anyhoo there I was standing with Brendan and some equally offensive ruddy faced chap looking for waiter chum the younger to reappear from where ever she was when I realised I was going to have to serve him. With my young friend apparently AWOL I had no choice. I doled out the menus, in silence, and recited the specials with all the passion of a call centre phone operative trying to sell double glazing. Brendan cut me off…

“This is my friend…” says Brendan

“Oh I” says I nodding at the beaming face of his mate.

“Yeah…” says he “…we are the symbolics”

“The symbolics?”

“Yeah….I’m cym he’s the bollix”

Sheeeeeeeit! I fell for it. I excused myself and went looking for waiter chum the younger who was last seen with two plates of roast beef, mash potato, yorkshire puds and a jug of gravy five minutes ago. I rounded the corner into her section to find her holding hands with the couple seated on table eight. She was giggling they had their eyes closed and they were all holding hands.

“What the fuck?” I mouthed at her. But she just shrugged her shoulders and kept on giggling.

“Are they praying?” I mouthed this again whilst getting closer for a better look. And yes indeed they were praying. It turns out that they had asked waiter chum the younger to pray with them before they ate. Not knowing quite what they were on about she ended up holding hands whilst they gave thanks for the bounty they had received. Crikey, this was a new one. I managed to squirrel her away before she ended up engaged to their son or joined their dangerous cult. Methodists are an odd lot.

Waiter chum the younger had endured a tough weekend what with the praying and the shouting. The shouting came from the chefs on Saturday night. They were under pressure, we all were but when they are under pressure we all get to hear about it. But waiter chum the younger has no fear, not like me I have fear in abundance, I have a wealth if you will of fear. My fear cup runneth over. But not her. They were in the middle of a mass wobbly about something or other and she uttered the words that one must not utter when a chef is having a moment, “calm down”. Oh my, this caused more ranting and shouting but she just walked off laughing. I sometimes wish I was a seventeen year old schoolgirl and not a permanently scared 36 year old man.

That said I wonder how she would have reacted when faced with this charmer…

FL – BOCA RATON — One too many orders for mozzarella caprese was apparently the breaking point for a Boca Raton chef who threatened to shoot the waitress who placed the order, according to police.

While waiting tables at Pizza Time restaurant on Southwest Second Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, Cathy Vultaggio hung a ticket for the popular salad of the fresh cheese and tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and basil.

Chef and manager Mark DeCraepeo got upset and said if he received one more ticket for mozzarella caprese, “I swear to God I’ll shoot you in the forehead,” according to a Boca Raton police report.Vultaggio and co-worker Kristee Como told police that DeCraepeo then slammed a black gun inside a holster on the counter top.

“Now you see I’m [expletive] serious. I’ll put a bullet right in your forehead,” he hollered, according to the women.

Knowing her she would have blown bubblegum in his face, called him a drama queen and sauntered off singing Britney Spears or whatever the hell the kids are into these days. I did make her do Brendan’s table in the end. When I asked her how it had been after he had left she said, “Who that old man? I just ignored him”.

I just ignored him? Now why cant I do that?

Oh yeah, the fear…..